All the rushing around centered on the largest private chamber, the one Hal remembered setting up with the best of his family’s heirlooms.The bed, he believed, had belonged to his great uncle and had been hand-carved by a local artisan.The headboard depicted a pastoral scene of shepherds minding their flock.
The door to the chamber stood open, and it was from within that room that the intermittent bell ringing could be heard.
Over Lucy’s muttered complaints and Henrietta’s rattled nerves, Hal could just barely make out a breathy tenor voice raised in confident demand…and the soothingly soft, musical tones of Gemma’s replies.
In a lull between pillow deliveries, Hal stepped to the open doorway and peered in.
The sumptuous, comfortable bedroom had been transformed into a sickroom.For some reason best known to himself, Sir Gilbert appeared to have arranged for the mattress to be removed from the four-poster bed and deposited on the floor, where he reclined, propped up with a multitude of pillows and wearing a dark red silk brocade dressing gown.The young man was entirely unknown to Hal, which allowed him to relax a bit.
Hal wondered if the demands for new pillows were to replace ones that had become soaked with the buckets of pomade required by Sir Gilbert’s artfully tousled dark curls.
Sir Gilbert had the sunken-eyed look of a poet in the early stages of consumption, at once pallid and feverish, full of things he needed desperately to communicate.One white-fingered hand clutched a small brass bell, the other…Gemma’s wrist.
For an invalid, he had quite a strong grip, Hal observed.
Gemma, who appeared to be attempting to pull away and rise to her feet, said, “Sir Gilbert, please, if you’ll only let me go down to the kitchen, I’m sure I can manage?—”
“No,” Sir Gilbert interrupted peremptorily.“You stay here.I know we’ve been acquainted but a few days, yet I find myself strangely comforted by your presence.Do you not believe in love at first sight?I do!If you leave my side, there is no telling what spasms shall overcome me.Stay, and let me read you another of my verses.”
Alarm widened Gemma’s eyes even as she swayed wearily on her knees at Sir Gilbert’s floor mattress bedside.
“Yes, sir, of course,” she soothed him while Hal held in a laugh and congratulated himself on his diagnosis of fashionably consumptive romantic poet.
Gemma gazed around her in obvious desperation, and Hal leaned against the doorjamb with his arms crossed over his chest and waited to be observed.
The moment she saw him, she gasped, and her lovely bosom rose and fell with the sharp intake of breath.Hal watched with interest, as did Sir Gilbert, whose vantage point was likely even more thrilling.Hal frowned.
She jerked her head at him in the direction of the hallway, her expression fierce; Hal divined that she would like him to leave.He also noted the way the motion of her head caused other portions of Gemma to jiggle interestingly.Sir Gilbert noticed it too.
“Yes, dear lady, sweet lady,” Sir Gilbert said fervently, his watery brown eyes fastened securely to the curve of Gemma’s breasts, “do not think of leaving my side.I shall surely die without you.”
Above his head, where Sir Gilbert could not see, Gemma rolled her eyes up to the heavens as though asking for special dispensation to do violence to another of God’s creatures.At least, violence was what Hal was contemplating as he realized that Sir Gilbert was steadily encouraging Gemma to bend down closer and closer to him until she was all but reclined on the hard wood floor beside his mattress.
Sir Gilbert appeared not to have noticed there was another man present; unsurprising, when his face was that near Gemma’s bountiful person.Hal could not blame anyone for finding that distracting.But since he wasn’t interested in watching whatever fumbling seduction was about to take place, Hal cleared his throat.
“Lady Gemma,” he said courteously, sketching a small bow.“And Sir Gilbert.I came to see if you required any help.”
“Can’t a man have any peace in this place?”Sir Gilbert cried, impassioned.“All these people coming and going with bowls of this and that and stuffing pillows behind one’s head, it’s exhausting!And now some scruffy, unkempt stable hand wants to know how he can help?It’s intolerable.”
The poetic lassitude had vanished, overcome by a distinct petulance that made itself known in the whine of his final words.Hal watched Gemma grit her teeth over the tart reply she so clearly wished to make.She managed to swallow it and produce a sickly smile instead.
Not having any ambition of his own to marry a baronet, Hal decided to help out.He widened his eyes.“Oh, sir, shall I fetch a doctor?There’s one who lives in the next village, only a few miles away; hopefully not too drunk yet by this time in the morning!”
Hal said a mental apology to old Dr.Phipps, who certainly deserved no such slander.
Sir Gilbert, meanwhile, had assumed an expression that made it look as though someone had slapped him with a codfish.His eyes, already quite round, seemed to bulge slightly.Hal realized the man was actually afraid.
“A doctor,” cried Sir Gilbert, bringing a hand to his throat.“Why?”
Hal blinked innocently.“Why, because you seem to have lost your memory!You complained of being interrupted constantly, but it was you yourself who ordered those many variations on breakfast and bedding—do you not recall?”
The sallow cheeks went ruddy with rage, momentary fear forgotten.“Why, you impudent?—”
“Sir Gilbert,” Gemma interrupted with a touch of desperation, “do not overtax yourself!You have indeed been complaining all morning of feeling unwell.I would see you rest, sir.”
The baronet subsided against his many pillows, his hand going out again to clutch at Gemma as his eyes fluttered shut.“Yes, very well.As long as you stay with me, sweet lady.”
The sweet lady grimaced and shifted her hip where it pressed into the hardwood.Hal quirked a brow.“Why is the mattress on the floor, if I might ask?”
